Jessica’s blog.

The night before last, Jessica was really unsettled, waking up every hour to hour and a half crying. I picked her up and rocked her to calm her down, then sang to her to get her to go back to sleep and it helped each time, but both her and mine sleep turned out very broken… As it was Tuesday, I’d packed our bags for Jessica’s swimming lesson the night before and fretted a bit about what food to bring and how to organise things. I’d decided to feed her as soon as she woke up at 6am, so that her next meal then could be at 9am, which I hoped would be in good time for us to get ready for the lesson start at 9.30.

But – completely out of character but as the obvious result of her lack of sleep – Jessica decided to have a lie-in! After her last awakening at 4.30am she carried on sleeping through to 6.30, then 7, then 7.30… She hadn’t been hot during the night but I’d still been hesitant about whether she’d be okay to go swimming. I didn’t want her to miss out, though, as she’d enjoyed it so much last time, so I’d decided to carry on as if we were going – I could always decide not to catch that bus to Redhill at the last minute. When she finally woke up at 7.50am I fed her straight away, then changed her nappy and clothes and off we went. In a way, that worked out better than I’d planned it, as Jessica was nicely rested and comfortably full for her lesson.

She really enjoyed herself again, splashing away in the pool and looking excitedly at the other babies. The half-hour took a lot out of her, though. She didn’t complain much, but when we had our shower and then changed her eyes were getting heavier and heavier. I fed her before we left the sports centre and halfway through her fruit purée dessert she nodded off in-between a couple of mouthfuls…

On Monday (10th September) Jessica started to cry only a few spoonfuls into her first solid meal for the day and then didn’t want any more. After a little while I gave up and warmed her some formula instead. It was the same situation at lunch-time. I felt disheartened: was the ‘honeymoon’ over now and she’d start being fussy about food and not like anything instead of everything? Ian suggested that if she’d had a cold at the weekend perhaps she had a sore throat, which could be why eating solids wasn’t her idea of fun at the mo. I didn’t think she was having any more trouble from her teeth at the time, but thought that could also have been a possibility. On the Tuesday (11th September) Jessica happily ate all the purée as per her usual self and I was reassured. But today she didn’t want her second breakfast or lunch again. I don’t push for very long and I always give her formula instead. She’s been coughing a bit today, though, so she’s probably still got part of a cold lingering. Maybe we shouldn’t have gone swimming after all…

Gabriella

(Entry written Monday 10th September:)

It’s been a little while again and it feels like so many things have happened. Wednesday (4th), when Jessica and I were over in Redhill seeing some of the mums and babies from the post-natal group, she seemed to be teething properly: her cheeks were flushed and hot, when she grizzled she whined (a new thing for her) and she dribbled excessively (she looked like I’ve felt after I’ve been to the dentist and had a jab…). I kept giving her Calpol (baby paracetamol in liquid form) and teething gel, hoping that it would help in some way. The afternoon didn’t turn out all bad though; in fact Jessica was really enjoying herself shrieking happily at the other babies, trying to steal their toys and pull their socks off… She hadn’t had much of a nap in the morning, though – which increasingly is the case nowadays, unfortunately – and come mid-afternoon she was really unhappy. I tried to settle her in her pushchair, which had been tucked away in our hostess’ dining room, but Jessica wouldn’t have it, so after a while I decided to call it a day and we took our leave. As I’d expected, we weren’t too far down the road before Jessica had fallen soundly asleep…

The following day Jessica was a bit the same – hot, flushed cheeks and extra grizzly – but the experience still didn’t seem too bad for her farmor, who came over to spend a couple of hours with Jessica in the morning, while I went out for a jog. (This is a weekly arrangement between me and Diana, though the day varies to suit.) The Friday was better, with Jessica more chirpy, but then at the weekend things were a bit funny again. Jessica was tired but found it hard to sleep, her cheeks weren’t flushed but come Sunday evening she was hot all over: her hands and feet are usually a bit cold but were warm and when I touched her head it felt hot. The thermometer showed 37.7 degrees – not sure if I held it in the best spot under her arm, but it did confirm a bit of a fever. She drank her supper slowly and didn’t want to finish her bottle (something she otherwise always does at her last feed for the day), but there weren’t any other causes for alarm, so I put her to bed as usual.

She took ages settling – not being upset, but just moving around in her cot. In the last week or so, Jessica has started to roll up on her right side during or before going to sleep. Sometimes in the night I hear her crying in her sleep and find her struggling against gravity to stay up on her side while her hips and legs want to roll back. (I usually try to ease her legs in a better position for her, though I’m not always able to – anything for a better night’s sleep, for the both of us…) She’s never been keen to have a blanket on, either in her bed or in her pram/pushchair, and promptly kicks it off if she’s awake and one of us put it over her. Now that she’s stronger, this pushing action shifts her in her cot, so that she moves further and further up during the night. She’ll also tug at the bumper guard (and has managed to tug at it so that it has untied in a few places), grab the bars and shake them, as well as sticking her feet and legs out through the bars. Sometimes it’s mayhem in her cot if she’s put in it wide awake. A couple of evenings ago I found her fast asleep lying across the cot with her legs crossed, her feet sticking out through the bars on the outer side and her fingers in a grip around two of the bars by her head…

Something I don’t think we’ve mentioned before, or at least mentioned enough, is Jessica’s keeness to use her legs and feet. She’ll grab for toys and things with her feet quite often, when I lean over her in the pushchair or when changing her nappy she’ll grab my arm very confidently with her legs and she likes to brush her lower leg across the surface she is sitting on, presumably just to see how it feels against her skin. For quite a while now, she’s got the habit of raising her leg slightly and then rotating her foot at the ankle – always her right foot and always clockwise…. Sometimes she’ll pull her trouser leg up a bit before the spinning starts. She likes watching her foot as she does this. Sometimes when in her highchair eating she’ll stop to look at her feet for a while. I don’t know whether this is a typical baby thing – I’ve certainly seen lots of babies put their feet in their mouth like Jessica also does – but it’s interesting to watch her fascination with her feet. I hope she keeps using them.

Thursday (6th September) Jessica and I were out in the garden in the afternoon. Jessica wanted to stand up, as she’s done a lot the last week or so – she reaches out and if we offer her our hands she’ll grab them and pull herself up to standing. This happened out in the garden this time too, but one of the garden chairs was not far from Jessica and she decided to take a few steps towards it to reach it, still holding my hands for support. In front of the chair, though, she let go of my hands and grabbed on to the seat. And then she took a few gingerly steps to the side, whilst holding on to the seat, until she reached the arm of the chair…! She couldn’t support herself for long once there (well, the garden chair was too light to provide any counter balance, at any rate), so I reached out and supported her again, at which she promptly put her face against the arm of the garden chair; she had wanted to put it in her mouth, so no surprises there, then… I was quite amazed, though, when the realisation that I’d just witnessed Jessica’s first steps without the support of another human being sunk in.

Jessica still hasn’t shown any inclination towards wanting to crawl. I’m starting to wonder whether perhaps Ian is right and she’ll skip that stage, perhaps do a bit of bum-shuffling to get places, like Ian and his sister did. This morning, when I came back in the living room again after having sorted myself some breakfast, she was still sitting on the floor among her toys but she was facing a different direction to how I’d put her. Ian assured me he hadn’t moved her. So I’ll be keeping a close eye on her to work out how that happened…

Gabriella

Many apologies for not writing for a while now. It’s important for us that we keep posting regularly on this blog but the last week and a bit has been busy and, apart from those chores that one cannot escape, we’ve prioritised spending time together.

Feels like so much has happened since last. Jessica is sitting very confidently now, reaching for toys, plastic bags, cables and all sorts of thing that we may or may not want her to play with…! With accessibility comes choice – something that she doesn’t seem completely sure on how too deal with. I’ve watched her several times pick one toy up, to then spot another toy and drop the first in order to pick up the second instead, then spotting a third toy and dropping the second one, only to spot the first toy again and decide that that one is the one she really wants – and so it goes on…

When it comes to weaning, we’ve moved a step further. My sister advised me on the recommended menu for 6-month-old babies in Sweden, so I’ve tried to follow that. Jessica has formula first thing in the morning and last thing before bed plus mid-afternoon. For second breakfast (10am) she now has fruit purée and white bread with unsalted butter cut into little pieces and without crust. Eating bread is still work in progress – she’s not refused it but eats with a slight amount of hesitation and over the last 4-5 days we’ve been building up from 2-3 little pieces to about the same amount as half a slice of bread.

For lunch she has a food purée followed by fruit purée as dessert. To make the food purée I pick one item from the potato/bread/rice/pasta food group and one from the beans/lentils/pulses group (being a veggie I don’t cook meat or fish for her) and the 2-3 veg. So far I’ve made Jessica a mix of red lentils, quinoa, broccoli, sweet potato and rosemary, a mix of pasta, courgette, carrot, green and yellow pepper and cheddar cheese and, today, a mix of couscous, celery, cauliflower and a variety of beans. I’m glad to say she has happily eaten them all. It takes a while to prepare, cook and blend but I’ve done biggish batches, so that I’m able to freeze 3-5 portions, which should nicely see us until the end of the month, if not further. At that stage, I was thinking, it might be time to try new things anyway…

About a week ago I started putting Jessica in our bath tub for her baths. I’m joining her in there and it’s great fun – she loves splashing about and doesn’t mind me shampooing her hair or water running down her face when I wash her. Ian got a bath toy for her back in December when he was in Barcelona for work one weekend and she loves it: it’s a furry and squidgy mum and baby crab attached together by a little cord and she loves splashing them about and sinking her gums into them. She has a couple of yellow bath ducks too that she really enjoys biting in the head. Most of all, though, she loves splashing and happily whacks her hands against the surface of the water, blinking a little bit when it splashes in her face. (She got so excited about it she tried ‘splashing’ my leg and the side of the bath too but that didn’t have quite the same effect…)

Last weekend we decided to make the most of what little summer there may or may not be left and drove over to Earlswood Lakes not too far from here to go for a little walk in the fresh air. Jessica saw swans for the first time and actually stopped to notice them – most birds and animals she still doesn’t seem to pay any attention too, but we were guessing these were too big and too many to ignore..! We hadn’t thought to bring any bread to lure swans and ducks over to us but luckily some other more experienced/better prepared parents nearby had, so we could watch the birds feeding for a fair while.

Jessica had her first swimming lesson Tuesday (4th September)! I had partly put her in the big tub the week before in preparation for that, so she wouldn’t go straight from tiny baby bath to huge pool. I’d been getting quite excited about the thought of her learning to swim and I wasn’t disappointed: she loved the experience. Other babies to look at, lots of water to splash and watch her own legs under water – brilliant fun. As you can understand, it was very much about fun and play in the pool for this age group and only very gradually leading to learning to swim. The lesson was 20 minutes with 10 minutes play time at the end, plastic duck and sailing boat for each baby provided… The lesson involved walking across from one end of the learner’s pool to the other, holding our babies first upright, bobbing up and down and then on their tummies, encouraging them to kick by repeating ‘kick, kick, kick’ to them (or ‘sparka, sparka, sparka’ in my case) and to stretch their arms forward by holding yellow bath ducks in front of them. When in the water at the side of the pool, us parents (yes, there was a dad there too and not just mums…!) should encourage our little ones to grab the edge with their hands – the intention being that later on, should the kids ever fall into a pool, they should instinctively turn around to grab hold of the side.

Jessica got very tired towards the end, rubbing her drooping eyes and her excited babble turning more quiet – she had missed out on her morning nap as she got too excited when we got on the bus when we would normally go on our morning walk. Together with the experience in the pool itself, she was absolutely shattered at the end of the half hour. In addition to this, I had misjudged the amount of time it would take to get the two of us to the Recreation Centre and getting ready for the pool, so I although the plan had been to give Jessica her second breakfast early, before the lesson, I had had to leave it until after, and by the time we had showered (another first for Jessica, which she seemed to enjoy – I washed her first holding her close to me with one hand and shampooing her with the other under the shower and when I had my wash she sat on the floor trying to grab the bouncing water drops with her hands) it was 10.30am and she was overdue her food by half an hour.
I fed her on the floor in the changing room as soon as I’d thrown some clothes on the both of us and when we retrieved the pushchair from the storage room at reception, it didn’t take long for me to calm her down enough so that she went to sleep in the pushchair. Next time we’ll take an earlier bus so that I can definitely feed her before the lesson. Then hopefully that’ll speed things up so that she can have her nap sooner too. I’m looking forward to the next time..!

Gabriella

On Saturday we were invited over to friends, Chris and Angela (the latter, incidentally, being the person who signed Jessica’s passport application form) for dinner. As we’d only received the invitation a couple of days before, we didn’t have time to arrange a babysitter. So we decided to take her with us. As we were due there at 7.30 and it’s a half hour drive, we had to feed her, get her ready for bed and hope that she settled in the car seat rather than the cot. She didn’t really settle on the way: even the motion of the car failed to rock her to sleep, so when we arrived we had a slightly cranky and confused baby. Fortunately, Chris and Angela allowed us to put Jessica in their bedroom where it was that bit quieter. It didn’t take Gabriella too long to sing her off to sleep, in which state she stayed all evening. Jessica stirred slightly as we put her back in the car and looked decidedly bewildered, but she nodded off again as soon as she realised that she was safe with us. Again, when we got home Jessica stirred when we took her out of the car, but she went straight back to sleep when Gabriella laid her down in the cot at around half past 11. Jessica then slept though until just before 6.
This has given us confidence to have more evenings out and taking Jessica with us.

Jessica’s not really shown any signs of wanting to crawl. According to my parents, neither my sister or I crawled and pretty soon after we were sitting upright unsupported, we developed a ‘shuffle-bottom’ motion, so maybe Jessica will go with that method.
Something I’ve noticed in the last few days is her insistance for standing up. If one pulls Jessica’s arms to bring her up into a sitting position, she will keep her body straight and allow herself to be pulled onto her feet. Once there, she doesn’t need much in the way of support. I can hold her hands lightly and she’ll stay there swaying gently. In fact, yesterday when I was changing Jessica for the night, I let go of her hands and she stayed up leaning very gently against my chest. As Jessica’s so keen to be upright, we’re trying to teach her the art of taking a few steps. Maybe she’ll skip the whole crawling/shuffle-bottom modes of propulsion and go straight to walking…
As an aside to this, we measured Jessica last week and she is now 68.5cm (27 inches) tall.

I think Jessica’s starting to enter the bam-bam (think The Flintstones) stage. Nearly everything she gets hold of gets shaken with extreme vigour! She has hurt herself slightly a couple of times. One particularly memorable (if that’s the right expression…) occasion was where she’d grabbed her green rattle. Jessica was really giving it a good shake, when she bopped herself squarely on the nose. After the surprised expression had worn off, she continued to shake the rattle vigorously. Unfortunately (and it was like it was in slow motion) there was a loud, slightly hollow-sounding, thud as the rattle connected with her forehead. There then followed a trembling bottom lip, capped off by a serious bout of Wah-Wahing. Needless to say I picked her up and comforted her for a bit. She was soon her happy, giggly self and appeared to have completely forgotten that it had happened.

I daresay that there’ll be other moments like this, but that’s all part of the fun of parenthood.

Ian.

I think I might have found something that Jessica doesn’t like: avocado. She’s had it twice now and it’s not been more than a few mouthfuls each time before she’s started to cry and not been interested in trying any more. It’s possible that her disinterest is down to the fact that I’ve given her avocado lunch-time, at which point she’s usually getting a bit tired again, even if she’s had a decent morning nap. Sometimes she gets impatient with solids as a result: she has been known to even refuse banana! (For this reason I have moved lunch forward about half an hour – the longer gap after lunch until the 4pm meal doesn’t seem to bother her.) So maybe it was just the timing that was wrong. Maybe I should try giving her avocado for her mid-morning meal next time…

When Jessica eats, I fill the spoon for her and then hands it over to her so she can feed herself. This means that meal time is pretty messy, with food a bit everywhere on Jessica, me and the high chair… (She’s managed to avoid the carpet fairly well, so far.) It would’ve been much tidier if I fed her, of course, but she gets impatient with that and I’d like to see if letting her handle the spoon herself this early on might encourage her to perfect her use of cutlery sooner. She manages to get most of the food in her mouth, I’m pleased to say, and the food that goes outside I retrieve with the spare spoon I’m holding and serve back to her.

Jessica now shows a definite preference for using her right hand when reaching for the spoon, even though I offer it to both her hands. It’s fine if she turns out right-handed, of course, but it’d be great if she’d be able to use both of her hands as equally well as possible, like Ian: he’s left-handed but in most instances ambidextrous.

This is our second day at home just the two of us – outside it’s cold, blustery and damp, which doesn’t exactly encourage me to take Jessica out and about much, even though we still go for our regular walks. She’s sat at that battery-driven ‘control panel’ type toy a fair bit now (she seems to have found renewed interest in it from her being able to sit on the floor and play) and she sits very well on her own now, I’m very proud to say. I suspect that the inflatable ring has had a lot to do with that.

She likes plastic bags a lot – if they’re within reach she’ll grab them and pull, if they’re light enough to thrash about with she will. The bag with nappies and the bag with cotton wool balls in the bathroom have both suffered repeatedly at her hands…

Just one more thing: both Ian and I have now caught Jessica, on different occasions, pulling her sock off. So it’s not just the wriggling that does it but deliberate action too. Now we are wiser. (But I bet you it will happen several times again anyway.)

Gabriella

On days when Jessica has slept well, including having a proper (1 – 1 1/2 hour long) nap in the morning and the afternoon, she’s happy and chatty and doesn’t need much to entertain herself. Unfortunately, not every day is like that, as she sometimes takes a bit more persuasion to fall asleep. I didn’t want to create an association between her cot and daytime napping, as her night-time sleep is going so well on the whole and I didn’t want to risk mucking that up. Plus we’re also out and about a fair bit and if she was unable to sleep anywhere else but in her cot, we’d be in trouble… Most of the time she goes to sleep in her push chair – connecting being on the move with an opportunity to sleep might turn out handy in future.

Yesterday Jessica didn’t nap very well at all. She only managed half an hour of sleep in the morning and afternoon respectively. As a result, she struggled to stay in a good mood during the day, starting to cry from sheer exhaustion at regular intervals. Unfortunately, this coincided with her farmor’s birthday celebrations and Jessica’s first pub lunch.

Jessica’s aunt Wendy had booked a table at The Plough and Furrows and, as usual, the new environment and seeing new people initially made Jessica very excited, but it wasn’t long until the cracks started to appear… When the tiredness was too much for Jessica to bear, Ian managed to rock and sing her to sleep and we put her in the car seat to let her sleep under a corner of our table. She slept for long enough for us to finish our desserts but that was about it and Ian and I realised we wouldn’t be able to stay for too much longer. I was preparing to whisk Jessica away for some fresh air and peace and quiet outside just as a couple of members of staff carried in a Bailey’s with a birthday candle for farmor Diana and the whole pub started to sing ‘Happy birthday’. This was in a sense the last drop and Jessica, red in the face, started to cry desperately… Needless to say, we got her out of there as soon as possible.

We were going back to ours for coffee afterwards and I tried to persuade Jessica to have another snooze but she wouldn’t have it. Her mood was swinging up and down all afternoon, but while it was on the ‘up’, she kicked a ball around with her Auntie Wendy and farmor Diana – from a seated position and with some assistance, I must add, but also with lots of giggles…!

Already at 5.30pm, an hour earlier than usual, Jessica had had enough of the day – there was nothing that could distract her from being grizzly. We got her ready for bed, I fed her and put her in her cot but she wouldn’t stop crying. After almost an hour I realised I just wasn’t going to be able to settle her and handed over to her Daddy, who repeated his trick from that same afternoon. Ian’s rocking and quiet singing made Jessica at ease and not long after he had closed the door around her she nodded off to sleep. I was dreading the night, fearing she would wake up a lot and be unsettled, but as it happened she slept through until 6.30am – so I actually got a lie-in…!

Today, Jessica’s been sitting up and playing without support, which was really exciting. I kept nearby to help her up when she toppled, which inevitably she did when she reached for something a little bit further away, but she sat upright all by herself for a good few minutes at the time.

She slept for an hour and a half in the morning and then 40 minutes in the afternoon and we had a really good day as a result. Today she had banana & raspberry for second breakfast, cauliflower with a bit of grated cheese for lunch and plum porridge, along with her usual formula feeds. I also introduced her to drinking water out of a sipping cup: she kept wrinkling her nose at the taste of water but also kept lifting the cup up for another try. I’ll keep giving her a bit of water everyday and hopefully she’ll grow to like it.

Finally, I can’t believe Jessica is actually 6 months old today… It’s amazing how big she looks suddenly.

Gabriella

After all that fantastic late summer weather we’ve now had a few days of autumn: cold, blustery and lots of showers… I’ve persevered with our morning walks, just wrapped a blanket around Jessica, a rain cover around the push chair and zipped my own jacket up a bit higher. Jessica didn’t seem to mind: she dozed off for her morning nap as per usual. When awake, Jessica likes to move about in the push chair (I’m clipping the ‘seat belt’ around her every time as she once very quickly got halfway on her way out of the push chair, with her bottom where her feet should be…), waving her arms and legs and sticking her feet up in the air, and she’s brilliant at wriggling her socks off. We usually catch her out before she manages to kick them off, though one afternoon I temporarily lost one and had to leave it until the next morning to go looking for it as Jessica was due a feed. The following morning I retraced our steps and someone had helpfully put the sock up on a fence, easy to find. We haven’t lost any of her clothes or toys yet and – touch wood! – I hope it stays that way…

Last Saturday (11th August) was lovely and sunny and we went over to our friends Phil and Anna in Reigate for tea and cake in the afternoon. Their little baby boy Mark is 4 months older than Jessica but they’re about the same size – though saying that, Mark is a little bit tinier than his siblings were at the same age. Jessica and Mark had a little bit of a chat and touching of hands, which was nice to see. They’re too young to be playing with each other yet but hopefully they’ll get on really well when they’re a bit older.

Phil and Anna have two dogs plus currently also two rabbits on loan. Jessica didn’t react much to either the dogs (although Rusty, the big Golden Retriever, is very hard to miss) or the rabbits – it’s like she doesn’t notice them somehow. It will be interesting to see when she’ll take an interest in animals (I’m assuming all kids do at some point…?).

Jessica had been yawning during the car journey there but once we arrived she got very excited by the new scenery and company, as she usually does. Subsequently she found it very hard to settle for an afternoon nap. That’s usually the problem when we’re somewhere different with her: she doesn’t want to miss out on anything new and keeps going until she starts to cry from exhaustion. I took her in my arms, stepped back a bit from the others and rocked from side to side while singing a lullaby. It took a while and she was grizzly meanwhile but eventually she did drop off to sleep. Unfortunately this was as late as 4.40-4.45pm, which means that she takes longer to get ready for bed in the evenings – not a problem in itself, only I like to have some of the evening to do a few bits and pieces and then sit down and relax with Ian for a while before going to bed myself…

Saturday evening, Ian’s sister and Jessica’s aunt Wendy came over to babysit while Ian and I went down the pub to meet a couple of friends (also with small baby being babysat) for a few drinks. I’d put Jessica to bed but, I guess due to her late afternoon nap, she was full of beans chatting and creaking to herself and rolling back and forth in her cot. She did go to sleep before Ian and I left, on her right-hand side with her thumb in her mouth – the first time she hasn’t fallen asleep on her back. (She doesn’t usually put her thumb in her mouth to go to sleep in the evening either.)

I forgot to say earlier that, apart from being able to go quite high-pitched nowadays – with a slight increase of volume at times – Jessica also smacks her lips and makes a ‘k’ sound. I heard the latter for the first time last Friday (10th August), I think, when I was looking through a picture book with her which was full of dragons – I kept talking about the dragons on the pictures: ‘oh, look, what a lovely blue dragon’ (‘drake’ in Swedish) and suddenly she went: ‘k, k’. I’d like to think she copied my sound but I’m not sure she’s at that stage yet.

Gabriella

We’ve got to borrow a highchair from a couple of friends and I put Jessica in it for the first time on Wednesday (8th August). She looked so small in it (and terribly cute!) but very confident too: sat there with her back straight and one arm on each of the arm rests, as if she was chairing an important meeting.

I have now fed her combinations like raspberry & banana, apple & mango, parsnip & peas, potato & sweet potato as well as porridge mixed with fresh fruit. She still hasn’t refused anything, though when I was due to feed her avocado the other day she was too tired to be interested in solids (“just let me have the straightforward bottle of formula, please!”) and I didn’t insist as I don’t want her to get frustrated with the whole food thing. She loves everything involving fruit – because it’s sweet I presume… Porridge mixed with fruit is a hit, too. She leans forward and opens her mouth, barely giving me time to fill the spoon again.

She has cried from frustration a few times, though, at what I’m assuming is the slow pace of the feed and the lack of control on her part. At times she has grabbed the mug out of my hands – she obviously knows that’s where the food comes from – and tried to drink the puree straight out of it… I have given her her own spoon and helped her fill it with food, and then she has promptly put it in her mouth. But, of course, she’s not mastered the skill yet, so most of the food doesn’t go where it should, plus she can’t refill the spoon (actually, she did try to once yesterday, but she put the handle down first, so it didn’t quite work…).

I’m not sure quite what to do when she cries out of frustration, apart from generally taking things slow and let her set the pace as well as I can. I try to offer the next spoonful as quickly as possible so it’s up to her how soon she wants to eat it, to let her hold the spoon herself and I obviously don’t force any food into her mouth or try to pop it in there when she’s crying. When she cries and I know there’s tiredness involved, I lift her out of the highchair and give her formula instead.

When it comes to fruit, Jessica has so far had banana, apple, pear, mango, raspberries and nectarine. I have deliberately hesitated about blueberries, as I dread the resulting stains on her muslin squares and clothes… She’s not throwing up quite as much as she used to – this was actually the case even before the weaning started. But she still does throw up and instead of only milk-coloured stains on everything we now have orange for carrot and sweet potato, red for raspberries and green for broccoli and peas…

I don’t know if it’s one of those general baby things (obviously a modern day one, if it is), but Jessica is completely fascinated by my mobile phone and will drop any toy if she spots it. She’ll grab for it straight away if it’s within reach and try to put it in her mouth. I’ll hazard a guess and say that she’s picked up on the fact that I find it so interesting: she sees me clicking the buttons and staring at the screen and feels like she wants in on the game. But I can’t let her play with it, really. I’m not sure about the radiation issue of having the mobile that close to her little brain. Also, she dribbles all over it and I’m not sure how waterproof it is. Yesterday she started to cry when I took it away – that’s the first time she’s ever reacted that way to anything she is playing with being removed.

Jessica has gone a step further in her development regarding rolling: in the last couple of days we have seen her do it deliberately a few times and looking mightily pleased with herself! Once on her tummy she’s looked all around her, emitted happy little shrieks and proceeded to grab at the nearest object. She likes lying on her tummy on the grass – I guess it’s a fairly new surface compared to carpets and rugs. She’ll tear at the grass, filling her hand and getting it all over herself, and afterwards I seem to find grass everywhere: on her toys, her rug, the nappy changing mat, her mouth…

When in the garden it has moved from the ‘see but not touch’ approach to a much more hands-on one – she’s been touching leaves for a while but nowadays she tears at them, ripping leaves of branches and either putting them in her mouth or dropping them on the floor. She can also grab a branch and then thrash it around for a while. One of us often takes her for a walk around the garden before bedtime and you can tell when she’s getting tired and fed-up and it’s time for bed: then she thrashes branches about without even looking at them, with a firm grip and a stern face.

Jessica splashes a lot more in the bath now, deliberately whacking her arms against the surface and kicking her legs and watching the effect. It’s fun to watch her play: she smiles and giggles. Her Mum gets pretty much soaked every time, so I’ve started to strip down to my underwear to bathe her. Jessica is getting a bit too long for the baby bath and as soon as she’s confident sitting up without support, I’ll go in the big bath with her – that’s bound to be easier all around.

Gabriella

Ian and I were pleased to find that there are quite a few birds in and around our garden (well, at least until we plant those berry bushes we’ve been thinking about…). It doesn’t seem like Jessica’s noticed them yet – I imagine they’re simply something fuzzy and distant in her peripheral vision, which is fair enough. But there’s one very bold robin, which I’m really keen that she should see. It’s come very close to us several times when we’ve been sitting out in the garden, perching on the fence or the back of a chair, and only the other day it flew straight over the keyboard of Ian’s laptop while he was lying on his stomach working on it, right in front of Ian’s face…! When I’ve been carrying Jessica for a tour around the garden the robin has occasionally come up to watch us, sitting on top of the fence, and I’ve been able to walk right up to it with Jessica in my arms. I’ve even pretty much touched its beak with the tip of my index finger going: “Look, Jessica, it’s a robin, look!” but she’s only glanced across it or looked the other way. Maybe she thinks that’s how all birds behave and nothing to make a fuss about.

There was a light summer rain today. Dark clouds came in while we were playing in the garden so I put Jessica down to take the washing down and bring her push chair all toys inside, which she didn’t like. She stopped grumbling as soon as I picked her up. As the rain wasn’t very heavy I stood with her just outside the door, so that she could feel the rain on her head and arms. She seemed to like it: she laughed and looked all around her and – carefully – up at the sky.

Gabriella

Summer is here, after all that rain! We’ve had a hot and sunny week now; apparently yesterday temperatures were 30+ in places. The lack of rain has meant plenty of opportunity to spend time in our little garden. The gazebo has not come down since last Monday and Jessica and I have spent a good few hours on a blanket underneath it.

Jessica loves being in the garden. She’ll roll around and shriek happily for ages, not needing much in way of toys to keep her occupied. Just the sounds and sights of her surroundings must be enough. And I take her point completely – lying on the blanket next to her and staring at that lovely blue August sky is a pretty fabulous thing…!

She naps very well in our garden, too. A couple of afternoons now she has slept on a blanket underneath the gazebo or in her push chair for 1-2 hours at the time. I’m thinking maybe the fresh air has something to do with it. She’s in an even happier mood for the last bit of the day after one of those naps, and I do wish she could get in the habit of having them every day but, alas, it does vary greatly… I can see how she forces herself to stay awake at times, as if sleeping is a bad thing.

She’s much better at sleeping at night. She settles quite nicely after her last milk feed, still around 6.30/7pm. I became braver about a month ago about whether Jessica would throw up in her cot or not from not settling straight away and nowadays put her in her cot straight away after her last feed, whether she’s dozing off or is wide awake still. (Though more often than not she’s close to going to sleep – she still doesn’t nap very well during the day and is pretty shattered by the end of it.) As long as she’s burped and full she doesn’t mind being put to bed. I kiss her goodnight and leave her to it. Sometimes she’ll be very alert when I do, but she just kicks her legs and fiddles with the bumper guard for a bit before she drifts off to sleep.

As I mentioned in my last entry, she’s started waking up again early morning. After some advice from my sister (thanks, Malin!) I’ve now introduced a portion of porridge during the evening to hopefully keep her going for longer during the night. For the last three evenings I’ve given her this about an hour before her last milk feed and at the weekend she woke up at 5.30am on Sunday and 6.30am today, so by all accounts it did make some difference. She was restless during the night, though – I’m not sure whether the heat had anything to do with that. I left one of the small top windows open and didn’t put any pyjama bottoms on her. She did her bit to keep cool, too, by promptly kicking her blanket off, seemingly in her sleep, the couple of times towards the morning when I thought it was getting a bit cooler and put a blanket over her legs as I didn’t want her to wake up from feeling cold.

Jessica has started to suck her thumb, very possibly a result of us not giving her a dummy. She doesn’t suck her thumb to go to sleep first thing at night but now and then I wake up during the night to hear a sucking sound from the cot: Jessica sucking her thumb, presumably as a way to help send herself back to sleep. Some of those times I’ve noticed that as she drifts off to sleep the thumb slides out of her mouth and she stirs again. On a couple of occasions – when that’s happened a few times preventing her from going back to sleep – I’ve got up, folded a muslin square and pushed it in under her arm and hand to prop them up just enough for her hand to stay in place when she nods off again…

I forgot to mention that we went to the health visitor clinic in Horley last Wednesday (1st August). At the surgery we are registered they only have the weighing clinic every fortnight during the summer, presumably because it’s a smaller clinic with less resources and/or with fewer babies on its books. They don’t have any self-weigh service but either the health visitor or the nurse that she works with has a chat with you and weigh the baby. It was the nurse that saw us; a very friendly and fairly young girl. She immediately commented on Jessica’s eyes, saying they were beautiful and throughout our visit she kept being distracted by Jessica’s excited, happy behaviour, interrupting herself halfway through sentences in order to say “hello there, gorgeous!” and “aren’t you a lovely, happy baby!”. (In general, Jessica is so ready to communicate and interact with people that it seems they just can’t help themselves but stop in their tracks to smile back and talk to her.)

Jessica was exactly 9 kilos this time (19 lb 13 oz), which is still on that higher curve. “She’s a tall girl, though”, the nurse said. “Shall we measure her?” (Which they never offered at the Redhill clinic, so of course I jumped at the chance…!) She made Jessica’s length 66.5 cm and seemed to feel she had to reassure me a couple of times that Jessica was “in proportion” and the higher weight curve was nothing to worry about. The next big health check-up for Jessica is at 10 months age at the clinic we’re with (in other places I’ve heard it’s 8 or 9 months) but the nurse asked me to come back to the weighing clinic in a couple of weeks time, when Jessica’s 6 months, to check her weight again then.

I lingered at the clinic for a bit before I put Jessica in her push chair to leave. I could tell she was excited about being there: she was waving her arms and legs, her head turning everywhere and she was looking at some of the babies waiting to be weighed trying to talk to them. I felt almost nasty taking Jessica away from there, as it had only been her and me that morning and would be so for the afternoon too and she wanted to make friends… But if she was disappointed as we left she didn’t let on. She’s very good to me, you know.

Gabriella